Antipodean Audits: Neoliberalism, Illiberal Governments and Australian Universities

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Antipodean Audits: Neoliberalism, Illiberal Governments and Australian Universities Antipodean Audits: Neoliberalism, Illiberal Governments and Australian Universities Margaret Jolly Abstract: This article explores neoliberalism in Australian universities, in the context of the politics of a higher education ‘reform package’ introduced by the Liberal-National Party Coalition presently in power in federal govern- ment. I focus attention on the relationship between the broader national envi- ronment and the local university configuration at the Australian National University and the dialectic between university academics and students as objects of bureaucratic practices and self-auditing subjects in these new modalities of power. I situate the Australian experience in broader global debates about neoliberalism and universities and earlier ethnographies of audit cultures. A Vignette, Llewellyn Hall, work but to attend a lunchtime protest 16 October 2003 meeting at which our Vice-Chancellor, Ian Chubb, and the General Secretary of the 16 October 2003: it is a glorious spring day NTEU, Grahame McCulloch, would both on the campus of the Australian National address us. University: peach blossom and wisteria The venue, Llewellyn Hall, is a place plumes vie with red flowering gums and more associated with classical music per- purple Hardenbergia vines. I had eagerly formances and university graduation ritu- hoped to be at home writing this paper, als than a political meeting. But the audi- since the NTEU (the National Tertiary ence was huge and rather excited. In the Education Union) had called a strike of all main business of the meeting the VC, academics and students to protest the lat- Chubby Chubb as he is affectionately est moves in the federal government’s called by some staff, reiterated what was higher education ‘reform package’. Lec- previously announced to the media, that tures had been cancelled and staff meet- he would be proceeding with the terms of ings postponed; we anticipated that the the Enterprise Agreement recently negoti- ANU (Australian National University) ated between the ANU and the NTEU. would be effectively shut down. But the He stressed that this agreement would preceding afternoon all staff received an remain silent on the question of ‘Aus- urgent email from the local chapter of the tralian Workplace Agreements’. Let me NTEU cancelling the strike at the ANU explain. In the 1980s, the centrally adjudi- because of the Vice-Chancellor’s commit- cated national awards that had hitherto ment to proceeding with a new, and high- governed the salaries and conditions of ly favourable, Enterprise Agreement, in most university staff were effectively sup- defiance of new federal government poli- planted by ‘enterprise agreements’, specif- cies. We were invited not just to come to ic to each institution, thus allowing them Anthropology in Action, Volume 12, Issue 1 (2005): 31-47 © Berghahn Books and the Association for Anthropology in Action AiA | Margaret Jolly to set salary rates and conditions which individual contracts. Indeed, at the ANU varied with local contexts. These new around 30 per cent of staff were already on enterprise agreements were the result of individual contracts where wages and an earlier generation of higher education conditions were more favourable than that reforms initiated by a Labor govern- of the collective enterprise agreement. ment, especially under the aegis of the (Often this was because their skills were then Federal Minister for Education, John deemed particularly ‘valuable’, i.e. in Dawkins. The present conservative gov- monetary terms. These were usually con- ernment, a Liberal Party-National Party tracts for economists and lawyers, who Coalition,1 led by Prime Minister John could attract far higher salaries else- Howard, was determined to go further in where.) The novelty of Australian Work- such higher education ‘reforms’: to more place Agreements was, rather, that pay thoroughly remake universities in the and conditions could be lower than those image of competitive private corporations achieved in collective enterprise agree- and to eradicate the traces of collective ments. It would thus have allowed lower bargaining among staff, by instituting pay rates and increasing casualisation of new ‘Australian Workplace Agreements’ university staff (see Collins 1994). Another which would be based on the right of controversial aspect of the government’s ‘choice’ of each individual to negotiate ‘reform package’ was an expansion in uni- their own salary and conditions. The versities’ capacities to recruit full-fee-pay- power of unions in the higher education ing students, including those with entry sector, which I should stress are voluntary scores below those who could not pay fees not compulsory, was to be diminished and upfront.2 VC Chubb also reiterated his almost proscribed. University administra- opposition to the new fee regime as de- tions were not to assist in encouraging grading of quality in higher education. As union membership, by advising new staff I had heard him say to the ANU Research of their existence, nor to help in the collec- Committee, ‘I am not going to pass on a tion of union dues from salaries. dog kennel to the next generation’. Chubb’s defiance was not just rhetori- And so Chubb proceeded to outline the cal. Proceeding with the enterprise agree- highlights of the new ANU Enterprise ment being negotiated, including a clause Agreement: a pay rise of 17.4 per cent over which declared silence on Australian three years (which places ANU in the top Workplace Agreements, risked the ANU tier of salaries in Australian universities); being declared ineligible for access to the twenty weeks of parental leave (maternity, $404 million additional funds to be made paternity and adoption leave) and a grad- available to the cash-strapped university uated return to work for mothers in the sector from 2004 to 2005. In a joint contro- first year; pro rata superannuation for versial policy announcement some weeks part-time staff working more than twelve before, Brendan Nelson, the minister for months; ‘economic and moral rights’ to higher education, and Tony Abbott, the intellectual property; support for the minister for industrial relations, had made responsible exercise of intellectual free- this additional funding contingent on uni- dom, and a commitment to retain and versities accepting this new regime of redeploy staff, to use redundancies only as industrial relations. a last resort. As each of these bullet points But, as VC Chubb and Grahame McCul- was displayed on the PowerPoint screen loch both pointed out, the prevailing sys- the audience broke into increasingly rap- tem already allowed the negotiation of turous applause. Both Ian Chubb and 32 Antipodean Audits | AiA Grahame McCulloch seemed delighted Indeed, the foundations of neoliberalism with the response and beamed at the tele- were laid by federal Labor governments in vision cameras. But, one week later, the the 1980s. Unlike in the UK where neolib- offending legislation was passed by the eralism is seen to have its origins in the House of Representatives (where the gov- Thatcher period (Shore and Wright 2000: ernment had a secure majority). Chubb 63), in Australia it rather originated in the was gambling on the future prospect that longue durée of Labor federal power the legislation would be rejected, or at under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, from least crucial clauses amended before its 1983 to 1996 (see Pusey 1991; Marginson passage through the Senate, where several 2002). senators from smaller parties held the bal- This was a critical period when govern- ance of power.3 ments tried to remake universities in the I offer you this opening vignette not just image of private corporations, and when as an ethnographic anecdote, but because the old Labor values of access and equity I think it distils three important features of in higher education were eclipsed by the neoliberalism in Australian universities. moral creed of enterprise, efficiency and First, the Australian university system is accountability. As elsewhere, there was a distinctive insofar as its major institutions proliferation of the language and practices are public institutions, mandated by gov- of audit in which ‘the financial and the ernment legislation and still supported in moral meet in the twinned precepts of eco- large measure by federal taxation. Although nomic efficiency and ethical practice’ there is an increasing reliance on external (Strathern 2000: unpaginated preface). I funding, and some expansion of private will turn to these dynamics in a moment, universities,4 private wealth and endow- but first a few preliminary thoughts on ments are far less important than in the neoliberalism in Australia. United States and even the United King- dom (although there the autonomy con- ferred by royal charters and private Some Brief Thoughts on wealth has been progressively eroded in Neoliberalism in Australia the last twenty years; see Shore and Wright 2000). This reliance on federal In an important early work, Michael taxes shapes the contours of the Australian Pusey (1991) charted the massive impact debate about ‘accountabililty’, in both eco- of economic rationalism (or neoliberalism) nomic and moral senses. Secondly, howev- in the Australian public sector from 1975 er, neoliberal policies are not just dracon- to 1990. This was influenced in part by the ian impositions by the federal govern- economic rationalism of both Thatcher in ment, but are negotiated by active sub- the UK and Reagan in the US, with their jects—including
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